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Sunday, August 19, 2007

Revising

Revising, everyone's favorite topic. Not! Revising has always been a challenge for me. Right now, I'm in the middle of some heavy revising as I'm trying to complete my novel which I'm currently calling One On One. It is the sequel to my book that comes out in November.

Right now, I think I'm on schedule to have it finished by the deadline I've set for myself. Then, I will send it to a few people who help me by reading& editing it. My sister is a wonderful & oftentimes merciless editor. She's very honest and has helped me so much. She is a great adherent of Sol Stein. She sent me his Stein on Writing book for my birthday and it has been a tremendous help.

In his chapter on revision, Stein says that there should be something visual on every page. He suggests putting a small V in the lower right corner of every page that has something visual on it. If the page has nothing visual on it, write NV and return to it later to add a visual element. Further, he says that if there are 2 or more pages with NV, maybe there is too much narrative summary and an immediate scene is needed.

This was great advice and I think I will try it as I do my next hard copy revision as soon as I'm done with my current one.

Revising this manuscript promises to be a little more fun than previous ones. My husband is not much of a reader. He read my first book after it was already published. My second one, he only read about 7 chapters. This one, has a basketball theme and perhaps is a little more interesting than the others. I told him I need his basketball expertise to make sure I don't get anything wrong. I know basketball a bit, but it always helps to have someone with greater knowledge point out everything that is wrong. Well, I'm off now to find my husband (he's putting the kids to bed. He really is wonderful, just doesn't like to read, especially women's fiction) and get him to read the next two chapters.